Gentrification 101: A Practical Guide

SFFrom the introduction to the fabulous resource “How To Be A Less Shitty Gentrifier,” compiled specifically for the Bay Area, but applicable in just about every city in North America.

This document is for you if you are planning to be a new renter in the SF Bay Area and you have race and/or class privilege, or recently became one. This document is for you if you are moving by choice, and have the means to support yourself in the Bay. Maybe you are moving for a job, or for school. Maybe you’re escaping a hellish situation and you hope here will be less hellish. Maybe you grew up here, but you’re ready to live on your own. You know that there’s a housing crisis. You understand that your moving will exacerbate an already dire situation. This is not a “how to move to the bay” guide, but a “so you’re moving to the bay, nothing will stop you, here are some tips on how to be a less shitty gentrifier.”

I am a wealthy white person who moved to Berkeley by choice in 2014. This document is the sum total of what I’ve learned from people of color (queer women esp.), orgs like Causa Justa Just Cause, born and raised bay area folks, and the internet. Here you will find information on how the housing crisis came to be, and how to play your part to fight back against the rampant forces that are, and have been, killing or forcing out black, brown, and indigenous residents of Ohlone Land/ the San Francisco Bay Area since 1542.

For more click HERE.

 

Backpacking With Hope

Ruby SalesBy Ruby Sales, Another Love Letter From The Front Porch, August 31, 2018)

Have you ever had to navigate the waters of systemic trauma of White supremacy and find ways to swim without drowning? How do we name the trauma that we endure from White supremacy without becoming the trauma that we endure? How do we speak the truth of our lives without being silenced or demonized by the tyranny of White denial? How do you stand tall as a European American without being pulled down by the seductive drug of Whiteness? Continue reading “Backpacking With Hope”

Wild Lectionary: Today, Know This

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Photo credit: Kit Ng

16th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 18(23) B

Proverbs 22

By Robert O. Smith

Proverbs of the elders. Received wisdom. The common sense of the ages. Men speaking to men, warning of loose women. Disjointed aphorisms, speaking against the Other, made know to us today.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Today, Know This”

One Broken Body is Enough

Sonny GravesFrom Rev. Sonny R. Graves, pastor at New Spirit UCC, who posted this on Facebook last week during a pilgrimage to the U.S./Mexico border with the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans. Sonny draws from the writing of Mary Luti.

Early morning over here in Arizona. The sky is lighting behind the range of majestic blue outline of the mountains. The summer night is warm, deep, and dry just like this Californian loves it to be. The systemic racism and anti-immigrant violence of my country and government further revealed here is feeling beyond words right now. It is heartbreaking. And we have been reminded many times throughout the trip it is also our responsibility that if our privilege or ignorance or unknowing has been disturbed – it is up to us to change it together. Continue reading “One Broken Body is Enough”

Sophia

Newby, Rhonda, picture of tatoo for poem SophiaBy Rhonda Newby-Torres

This piece was developed during the third Bartimaeus Institute Online (BIO) Study Cohort 2017-2018.  These pieces will eventually be published in a Women’s Breviary collection.  For more information regarding the BIO Study Cohort go here.

In the beginning

there was only darkness

Her thundering groans travel effortlessly through the night

as she rolls and bends through the pain

She wants to squat

but her knees will not unlock Continue reading “Sophia”

Sister Anna: A litany for worship inspired by the Prophetess Anna

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Rembrandt, “The Prophetess Anna”, 1639

By Ken Sehested

Sister Anna. Last-named prophet in Holy Writ, more
likely listed among household property and livestock.

When did your Temple-dwelling vocation begin?
What sustained your twenty-four-seven vigil
for all those years? Continue reading “Sister Anna: A litany for worship inspired by the Prophetess Anna”

Attacking Their Ideological Foundations

BindingWe continue our every-Sunday-celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel. This week, the lectionary gifts us with an episode from Mark’s Gospel where Jesus deals with obstacles to an integrated community.

This episode resumes Mark’s polemic against the Pharisaic movement, begun in Mark 2:15, over the issue of the purity code as it defines the propriety of table fellowship…The issue at hand is maintenance of strict group boundaries, represented here by practices of ritual purity and dietary restriction. The Pharisees defend the purity code as fundamental to the ethnic and national identity of the people; Jesus repudiates these exclusivist definitions by attacking their ideological foundations… Continue reading “Attacking Their Ideological Foundations”

The Humanity That is Being Caged Inside

BorderThis week Rev. Traci Blackmon offered this prayer on the Mexico side of the U.S. border wall with a group of about 80 sojourning with the United Church of Christ’s Faithful Witness at the Border.

We come to this Border Patrol station, not as an enemy but as friend, because we are all connected by God. As you go about your jobs of border enforcement, as you go about guarding the border, I pray that you guard your hearts, so that you don’t lose touch with the humanity that is being caged inside; so you remember to treat those who are being detained with the same care and dignity that you would treat your own family. You must guard your souls, just as we must guard the soul of this nation.

Wild Lectionary: No Fence Can Hold

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Photo credit: Dylan van Dyke Brown

15th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 17(22)B

Song of Solomon

By Cheryl Bear

he said, oh lovely one
follow my deep, ancient footprints
you will find me
you will track me until i catch you
i will always stand up for you
you remind me of a spirited young appaloosa
no fence can hold you
you’re blinding, dazzling
like trying to look at a river
flashing with sunlight Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: No Fence Can Hold”